THERE WOULD BE A SCIENTIFIC VIBE TO ALEX PUZ'S PAINTINGS even if they weren't accompanied by the Baltimore artist's diagrammatic drawings of how colors affect the eye and the brain. The title of Puz's show at Pazo Fine Art's Kensington location is "Trichromacy," which refers to the process in which three independent channels, derived from the human retina's three different kinds of cone cells, simultaneously send signals from the eye to the brain.
The artist's style recalls Bridget Riley's 1960s op art, but is denser, more intricate, and less dependent on simple illusionist effects. In Puz's pictures, overlapping ripples of flashe vinyl acrylic pigment roll across canvas, yielding patterns that are both repetitive and contrapuntal. The crisp, systematic abstractions suggest radio waves, cerebral pulses, and photographic moire patterns.
The 12 pictures offer variations on a few motifs. Three in the "Island of Self Presence" series feature vertical lines that deflect in sync toward the bottom of the composition. The horizontal gestures in a pair of "Psychache" paintings curve in opposite directions, one ascending and one descending. Most direct, and often most effective, are the four titled "Chromatic Instinct" (plus their respective color combinations in parenthesis). The designs in these paintings are so regular that the eye gazes past and -- seemingly -- within them. Where Puz's biomechanical drawings are full of action, the "Chromatic Instinct" paintings are meditative. They demonstrate how the active experience of color can approach stillness.
